by Judi Curtin
So now you know all my terrible secrets. I hope you’re not too shocked, and I hope we can keep in touch. It’s nice to have someone to talk to. Sorry this letter is so long.
Your penfriend,
Luke
PS I think the name Elma is OK. If I could pick a name for myself I’d go for Sam. I think it’s nice and friendly.
ELMA
The next few weeks went by slowly. Mum seemed to be getting used to being at home in the afternoons, and wasn’t so jumpy. Sometimes she sat down and read a magazine, or phoned a friend for a chat. Sometimes she even looked happy.
Dad still watched TV a lot, but now it was called ‘research for the UK finals’, and it didn’t seem like such a waste of time. Also, he got dressed properly every day now, and most days he took Snowball for a walk, or took the boys to the park to play football. One day he went to the supermarket with Elma, and they bumped into Tara. Next day Tara said that Elma’s dad seemed ‘really nice,’ and Elma floated around on a little puffy cloud of happiness all day long.
Then, just when Elma thought she was going to die from eating her mum’s cooking, there was some really, really great news. The school got a grant to pay for a cookery course for one of the dinner ladies. Mum was picked (Elma could guess why), so there was real hope that in a few months they might even be eating food that tasted like food. And maybe, just maybe, soon she could invite Tara home without feeling she was risking her friend’s life.
The day of the geography quiz final was wet and windy. Everyone got soaked on the way to the railway station, and shivered most of the way to London. Dad did his best to cheer them all up, but Elma couldn’t help feeling that the day had started out badly, and was sure to continue in the same way.
The train ran late, and they got to the BBC just on time. Dad was whisked away, and Mum, Elma and the boys were led into a small room. There was a table with tea, coffee, and heaps of yummy-looking cakes. Mum drank litres of black coffee, and the boys ate most of the cakes, but Elma couldn’t touch anything. She was so nervous she felt like she was going to throw up. She was so proud about Dad winning the regional final that she’d boasted to the whole school about it. So now everyone was going to be listening. If Dad did badly, she would never, ever hear the end of it.
Once again, there was a radio in the waiting room, and after ages, the quiz began. It was just like the regional final, with five contestants, and five rounds of buzzer questions.
The questions were very fast and it was hard to tell who was winning, but at the end of the first round, the scores were almost level, with Dad in joint second place.
At the end of round two, Dad was in second place on his own. Zac and Dylan did a little victory dance, scattering cake crumbs all over the carpet.
After round three, Dad had slipped into third place. Elma felt like crying.
Was Dad going to fall to pieces?
If he did, what would happen to them all?
There was a short break, and soft classical music began to play. Even Zac and Dylan were quiet, sitting pale-faced on a huge red leather sofa. Mum had her hands over her mouth, and her eyes looked tired and scared.
All of a sudden, Elma felt like walking away from the room, away from the BBC, away from her family. The whole quiz thing had been an impossible dream. How could she have thought that her dad could win a national quiz? She’d learned at school that there were almost sixty million people in the UK. How could Elma have thought that her dad could be better at geography than the other fifty-nine million and however many hundreds of thousands were left?
Just then, the music stopped, and round four began. Elma held her breath. Dad seemed to be doing OK. He was buzzing quite often, and never getting any questions wrong. At the end of the round, he was back in second place.
As the fifth and final round began, Elma laced her fingers together, and squeezed tightly until her fingertips began to turn white. She glanced at her mum, who seemed to be praying. The round seemed to be progressing in s-l-o-w m—o—t—i—o—n. It was almost as if the world had suddenly decided to turn at a more leisurely pace, just because Elma’s dad was in the last round of the BBC geography quiz.
Elma stopped listening to the questions. There was a strange kind of buzzing in her ears, as if her brain had decided she couldn’t listen any more. Soon Mum grabbed her arm. ‘It’s over,’ she whispered. ‘That was the last question.’
Elma felt like she was waking from a long sleep. ‘And???’
Mum shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I lost count of the questions.’
The quiz presenter’s voice interrupted. ‘Well, that was a very interesting round, and at the end this is how things stand …’
There was along silence. Elma felt like screaming. She wished she could run into the studio, find the presenter and shake him to make him call out the results quickly.
Finally the presenter continued, ‘In fifth place … Laura Wilson.’ There was the sound of clapping from the other contestants. Elma wondered if Dad was clapping with the others. She wondered how he felt. Did he know who had won?
Was he glad he hadn’t come last?
Was he glad he was here?
Or did he wish he was at home, lying on the couch, listening to Snowball snarling in the yard?
The presenter interrupted her thoughts. ‘In fourth place … James Dowling.’ There was more polite clapping. Elma supposed that James Dowling wasn’t clapping. Was he very upset because he’d come second last? Was he picking up his coat and getting ready to leave?
‘In third place … Amrita Sharma.’
Elma breathed again. Dad was first or second. She told herself either would be good, but in her heart she was fairly sure that second place wasn’t good enough at all. First place would take the winner to Paris, for a big European competition. The person who came second would go back home with nothing but their tattered dreams and a souvenir mug.
This time the silence was so long that Elma began to wonder if the presenter had packed up his microphone and gone home. At last he spoke again. ‘And now we have an interesting situation. It’s a dead heat between Michael Davey and June Worth.’
Zac and Dylan began to jump up and down, screaming loudly. After a moment Dylan stopped. ‘What does that mean, Mum? Does it mean Dad won? Is he the champion? Is he going to Paris?’
Mum put her arm around him. ‘Shh, love. Listen and we’ll know.’
The presenter spoke again. ‘I’d like to congratulate all five contestants on an excellent competition. I have to say that the standard has been particularly high this year. Over the past few months …’
Elma stamped her foot impatiently. ‘Get on with it,’ she muttered. ‘Tell us what happens next.’
Finally the presenter got to the point. ‘As we have two contestants with equal scores, we go to a sudden death.’
Zac went pale. ‘That doesn’t sound very nice.’
Elma had to laugh, but stopped quickly as the presenter continued. ‘I’ll ask one question, and the first to buzz gets to answer. If he or she gets it wrong, I pass to the other contestant. Now, Michael, June, are you both ready?’
June’s ‘yes’ was loud and clear. Dad’s sounded like Snowball when he was having nightmares.
‘And the deciding question is: In which country is the volcano Popocatepetl?’
There was another long silence. Elma jumped when the silence was broken by the shrill sound of a buzzer. The presenter spoke. ‘And that was June. Your answer please.’
Elma began to chant in her head: Get it wrong, get it wrong, please get it wrong.
But June didn’t get it wrong. She spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Popocatepetl is in Mexico.’
‘And we have a winner! Well done, June. You are this year’s National Geography quiz winner. Well done to Michael Davey, a valiant contestant, in second place.’
There was more clapping. Elma could hear June Worth’s gasps of disbelief. She wondered if all the other contestants hated her for winning the priz
e they so desperately wanted for themselves? Did Dad hate her? Elma certainly did. She hated June Worth even more than she hated Evil Josh. She hated June Worth (whom she’d never even met) more than she had ever hated anyone in her entire life. June Worth had ruined everything.
Much later, Dad came back to the waiting area. He was smiling, but he looked like he really wanted to cry. Everyone hugged him, and tried to laugh when Zac said, ‘I thought you were the best, Dad.’
The journey back to Manchester was a sad, quiet affair. Every now and then Dad broke the silence by saying, ‘I knew it. I knew the answer.’
No one argued with him, but secretly Elma wondered if he was just pretending. Then, just as the train drew into the station, Dad spoke again. ‘I knew it was in Mexico. I saw a programme about it last year. The name Popocatepetl means ‘smoking mountain’. It was named by the Aztecs. It’s near the city of Puebla. It’s–’
Elma interrupted him. ‘If you knew all that, why didn’t you buzz?’
Dad sighed. ‘I don’t know, love. I knew the answer, and thought, now I just press the button, and then I looked at my finger, and I hesitated, and before I could move, the other woman buzzed, and it was all over.’
Elma didn’t know what to say. Dad was right – it was all over.
There was no celebration dinner that night. Mum just served up the usual mush.
In the morning, Dad wasn’t up when everyone else left for school. Elma felt sure that it was back to the same old routine. Dad in front of the TV, avoiding his family, avoiding life.
School was OK. Evil Josh tried to tease Elma about her dad being a loser, but no one listened. One of the other boys pushed him away. Everyone crowded around Elma, and asked about her dad, and seemed to think that second place in the UK was a good result. And second place was a good result; it just wasn’t quite good enough. If Dad could have got through to the European competition, the dream could have lived for just a bit longer. And without the dream, life would slip back to the way it used to be.
When she arrived home after school with Mum and the boys, Elma expected to see Dad lying on the couch, watching TV. The house was quiet, though, and it was unusually clean and tidy. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a bundle of books. There was a huge grin on his face.
Elma was afraid to ask what he was so happy about.
Luckily, Zac wasn’t as cautious as Elma. ‘What’s going on, Dad?’ he asked.
Dad grinned. ‘What do you mean?’
Zac thought for a minute, then he rubbed his dad’s chin. ‘You’ve shaved. And the house is clean, and–’
Dylan continued. ‘–and the TV isn’t on.’
Dad grinned again. ‘No time for TV. I’m too busy now.’
Mum sat down and looked at Dad in disbelief. ‘Too busy doing what?’
Dad grinned again. This was getting annoying. Elma felt like punching him, but hit the table instead. ‘Just tell us, Dad. What’s happened.’
‘I’m going back to work.’
Now everyone else grinned, and blurted out their questions. ‘Where?’ ‘How?’ ‘Why?’ ‘When?’ ‘Doing what?’
So Dad sat them down and explained that he’d gone to the job centre that morning. There he spoke to a job counselor, and he’d done an interview, and he was going to do a trial placement in the Animal Welfare centre. If it worked out, he could do a training course to be a vet’s assistant. The placement started tomorrow, so would everyone please stop asking questions because he needed some peace and quiet to read up all the books he’d brought home.
After all the excitement had died down, Elma went to sit by her mum. ‘Can I invite Tara over after school tomorrow?’
Mum smiled at her. ‘Of course you can. Now, run upstairs and do your homework. I’ll call you when dinner is ready. It’s roast chicken.’
And Elma was so happy, even the thought of dinner couldn’t spoil it.
In her bedroom, she pulled out the letter she’d got from Luke that morning. First she took out the photograph. He looked nice – kind of normal. He looked happy, too, sitting there on that huge old farmhorse. But hadn’t he said before that he had black hair with blue tips? All along she’d been picturing someone else. She’d been writing lies to someone who didn’t look a bit like this nice Irish boy.
She opened the letter and read through it one more time. All of a sudden, she felt guilty because her problems had all sorted themselves out. How pathetic she had been – upset because Dad had been injured by a toilet. And anyway, Dad was better now, not like Luke’s dad, who was never going to recover. Poor Luke. No wonder he told as many lies as she had. Maybe telling the truth is only easy when you are happy.
She ran downstairs. ‘Dad,’ she said.
Dad looked up from his reading.
‘Yes, love. What is it?’
‘You know that mug you won, the BBC one?’
Dad nodded. ‘What about it?’
‘How badly do you want to keep it?’
Dad shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s nice, but it’s only a mug, I suppose. Why?’
Elma sat down beside him. ‘Well, there’s this boy, Luke. He’s my penfriend. He’s the one who gave me the idea about the geography quiz. And I’d like to send him something. So can I send him the mug?’
Dad smiled at her. ‘Yes, I suppose you can. I’ll get you some bubble-wrap later, so you can post it safely.’
Elma went to the shelf and took down the mug. As she left the kitchen, Dad called her back.
‘That’s very kind of you, Elma,’ he said. ‘This Luke is lucky to have a nice penfriend like you.’
Elma ran upstairs and tried not to think how not nice she had been to Luke in the beginning.
She took out her pen and paper and started to write.
Dear Sam,
I am so so so so sorry for your dad. It must be awful for you. My dad was bad, but he wasn’t as bad as all that. And he’s better already. Your suggestion about the quiz is what changed him. It kind of woke him up, if you know what you mean. You see, his back injury was better, but his mind seemed to have gone to sleep. He didn’t win the geography quiz final, by the way. He came second. It doesn’t matter, though. He’s going back to work tomorrow, and we are all very happy about that.
I hope you like the mug I’m sending you. It’s the one Dad got for being in the finals. I think you deserve it, because you gave me the idea of the quiz to start with. You can show it to your dad.
Tara says I should be cross with you for telling me so many lies. (But that’s only because she doesn’t know how many lies I’ve told you.) I probably can’t remember them all, but these are the ones I can remember:
1. Dad didn’t get hurt saving a little girl. He was unloading a lorry, and a toilet fell on him and injured his back. I think you can guess why I didn’t tell the truth about that.
2. I don’t have a little sister called Jessica. I just wish I did. I do have two little brothers, though. They’re called Zac and Dylan. And they’re quite nice (for boys).
3. Snowball isn’t a cute furry cat. He’s a huge, ugly, mean-tempered Alsatian with bad breath and wiry hair.
4. My mum is probably the worst cook in the world, and she doesn’t work in a fancy restaurant – she’s a dinner lady at my school.
So that’s it. They’re the biggest lies. I think I made up stuff because I didn’t like the truth.
It’s nearly summer holidays here, and next year I’m going to a new school. I’d like to promise to write to you, but soon it won’t be my homework any more, and I’m a bit lazy, so please try to understand if I don’t write.
If I do write to you, I’m going to put my stamp on upside down. I’m always going to do that from now on. So even in fifty years time, if you get a letter with an upside-down stamp, you’ll know it’s from me.
I hope Helen has a lovely baby. (If it’s a girl she might have long blonde hair and you could call her Jessica.)
I hope you have a nice life.
Your
About the Authors
JUDI CURTIN grew up in Cork and now lives in Limerick where she is married with three children. Judi is the best-selling author of the ‘Alice & Megan’ series and of Eva’s Journey. She has written three novels, Sorry, Walter, From Claire to Here and Almost Perfect. Her books have sold into Serbian, Portuguese, German, Russian and Lithuanian, and into Australia and New Zealand.
The ‘Alice & Megan’ series: Alice Next Door, Alice Again, Don’t Ask Alice, Alice in the Middle, Bonjour Alice, Alice & Megan Forever, Alice to the Rescue, Alice & Megan’s Cookbook
ROISIN MEANEY was born in Listowel, County Kerry and now lives in Limerick city. She divides her time between teaching in the Limerick School Project and writing books. Her first book for young readers, Don’t Even Think About It, was published in September 2006. She’s also had six adult novels published: The Daisy Picker, Putting out the Stars, The Last Week of May, The People Next Door, Half Seven on a Thursday and Love in the Making. She likes reading and eating chocolate, and occasionally talking to her two cats.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2012 by The O’Brien Press Ltd,
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First published 2007
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–525–0
Copyright for text © Judi Curtin & Roisin Meaney 2007
Copyright for typesetting, design, illustrations and editing
© The O’Brien Press Ltd
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